Depends on who you work for, which name you call the dive site by. I “grew up” in the biz calling it Big Dipper, but other operations on the island call it Little Tunnel. We used to call the next site down Little Tunnel, and other ops call that one Texas Hole. It seems counter-intuitive. Anything that's described using Texas as an adjective is usually FRIGGIN HUGE (ie Texas Belt Buckle, Texas Toast, Texas Chili, etc) This tunnel/hole is tiny. I actually got stuck in there one time after Hurricane Mitch re-arranged a bunch of sand in there. It's quite a scary little tunnel, as it's very dark, very deep, and you enter it through a crack, have to twist 90 degrees on the way down, and it's pitch black when you get to the bottom and start heading out over a mound of sand and then you can see some dark blue of the opening where you come out, at about 115'-120'

Juvenile Spotted Drum

But enough about that dive site, that's not where we dived today :) (dove is a bird, or one quarter moisturizing cream, not the past tense of dive) We dived at Big Dipper today with Matty & Bert from RiverFish SportsEye Divers. It was windy, with 15-20kts and gusts to about 25 or so, which made it COLD. My dive buddy Tina and I dropped into the big dipper and then out into the blue around 90'. After the initial shock of cold water (it was 79f at the surface) We hung a left (south) and headed for the pinnacle. As we were swimming over there, I got the camera out and started calibrating the white balance for the depth and getting it ready for pics. Around the pinnacle we went and just at the crotch where the pinnacle joined the rest of the reef, I spotted a little black & white movement. It was a juvenile spotted drum. WAY COOL FISH. They start out with these long graceful fins, and then they “grow into them” and they get smaller the older they get. They look best when they're babies and juveniles though. I stopped and took about ten pictures of them, some with flash, some without, some with custom white balance, some with underwater preset. About five of them turned out pretty well, and 5 were good, but just a hair out of focus. The good ones got uploaded to flickr this afternoon. Did I mention that it was cold out? We finished the dive with a safety stop and then climbed back aboard, wet, into 20kt wind. UGH. FREEZING.

Spanish Anchor (trust me, it's there)

We went to Spanish Anchor for the second dive. The anchor itself is probably 400 years old or so, and it's completely overgrown with marine life now. The only way to really see it is to know that you're looking for one, and keep an eye out for a definately man-made straight line underwater. Even in this picture it's hard to make it out, but once you know it's there, it pops right out at you, kind of like those stereogram pictures. “Hey! A Sailboat!” I also took another shot of a trumpetfish but he moved and his head is sorta behind a soft coral, but other than that it's a well-composed shot, in focus and everything! Did I mention that it was cold out there today? We got back in for the second dive, already chilled from the first. The water temp on this dive was 77f and it was bone-jarringly cold. Call me a pussy if you will, all you arctic drysuit divers up north, but when you're accustomed to 84f+, 77f in a 3mm full wetsuit is frickin freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth! Our bottom time was 40 mins max at 50 feet. At 20 mins I was shivering. At 25 mins I thought “ONLY FIVE MINS HAVE GONE BY???” at 30 I started heading for the boat and at 35 I couldnt take anymore and started out ascent. I was torn between letting my buddy down, who probably doesnt get to spend too much time underwater in the “tropics” and bringing my core-temperature down into the 'critical' levels. :) OK, it wasn't that bad, but it was pretty cold.

Back out again tomorrow morning, I've busted out my 5mm titanium lined suit and hope I can fit into it still. Otherwise it's going to be the 3mm full suit with an 8oz rashguard underneath it and probably a new mouthpiece for my reg after I bite right through it clenching my jaws against the cold